NOMI RESTAURANT

By helicopter

Nineteen minutes from Kyoto Heliport, twenty-one from Osaka. You cross the Tamba hills and land on the helipad on the restaurant's own grounds. A place that is otherwise twenty minutes by car from the nearest station becomes a lunch trip from central Kyoto. From Tokyo Heliport the flight is about two hours fifteen minutes. A day trip for the lunch course works, and so does an overnight paired with Amanohashidate or an inn on the Tango coast.

The Vertiport view

NOMI's own words are "yami × kireaji": wild flavour and the sharpness of a blade. In this house in the mountains of Fukuchiyama the centre of the cooking is not fire but the knife. The kitchen has a room set aside for sharpening, and the three Yamamoto brothers have been sharpening since they were three years old. They say more than twenty knives are honed during a single meal. Sharpness is treated as a flavour: a cucumber cut with a push stroke tastes different from one cut with a pull stroke, and the course lets you taste the difference for yourself.

The ingredients are theirs too. The boar and deer are trapped by the brothers, brought back alive, dressed on site and rested in a dedicated ageing room. Rice and vegetables come from their own fields, eggs from free-range hens, wild greens and mushrooms from the surrounding hills in season. With a single principle, "as delicious as possible", they run one unbroken line from the hunt to the plate. The restaurant received Silver in the Tabelog Award 2026.

We recommend it because this is a lunch that only really works by helicopter. A morning in Kyoto, twenty minutes to a table in the hills, and the afternoon free for the sea or the city. The shorter the journey, the longer you get to spend in NOMI's mountain time.

Food and the course

There is one course, "NOMI Yami × KIREAJI", around eight dishes from appetiser to main, changing with the season and the hunt. The brothers bring each plate from the open kitchen and talk through the ingredient and the knife behind it.

Dashi and the blade

The meal opens with katsuobushi shaved to order on a plane and a dashi drawn at 83 °C, which sets the tone for everything that follows. Then come the cucumber and carrot namasu, a dish that is really about the cut itself. The sharpness of the surface changes the texture and the way the aroma lifts, and your palate understands it before the explanation does.

Boar and deer

The leads are the animals the brothers hunted. Boar smoked over rice straw, venison shabu-shabu, a cutlet of venison loin aged around ten days. Skewers of heart and leg come with sansho pepper, on sticks the brothers whittled themselves. A boar-and-venison hamburg and a small bowl of boar over rice close the savoury side. The aim is never to mask the wildness but to bring it forward.

Rice and eggs

The brothers' own rice cooked side by side in a clay pot and a copper pot, a chawanmushi and a rolled omelette from their free-range eggs. Quiet dishes, and the ones that most clearly show the house attitude: do the ordinary things to an extreme.

Dessert and coffee

Dessert is the fruit of the season; even the toothpick served with the muscat grapes is hand-made. The meal ends with house-roasted coffee and latte art poured by the youngest brother. On some dates the brothers serve a sushi course instead.

Drinks

Sake and wine are proposed to match the course. On a day you fly home, a non-alcoholic pairing can be arranged.

The room

A single house in the hills with nine seats around an open kitchen. The slab counter and wooden tables were built by the brothers; the tableware is chosen by their father. From the terrace you see only fields and mountains. Allow about three hours, which leaves time to watch the sharpening between courses. Private hire for up to eight.

Around the restaurant

• Fukuchiyama Castle, built by Akechi Mitsuhide: five minutes by helicopter, thirty by car.
• Amanohashidate and the boathouses of Ine, about fifteen minutes by helicopter, make a natural afternoon after lunch.
• The Motoise shrines and Mount Oe are thirty minutes by car from Miwa.
• For an overnight, stay on the Tango coast and follow the shoreline home the next day.
• Suggested plan: depart Kyoto Heliport late morning, lunch course, then fly over Amanohashidate on the way back to Kyoto or Osaka in the evening.

照片

Photos: Space Aviation

基本信息